Claiming this hack in opposition of the controversial
international copyright treaty known as ACTA, which had been
widely protested around the world for its potential to curtail
freedom of expression on the internet, Anonymous continued the
political messaging that has marked much of its recent high-profile
actions.

Anons claiming responsibility for the attack spoke to Wired.com
in an online chat just as it happened, freely admitting that there
was nothing technically remarkable in this hack. As one remarked,
"own & rm and move on." (rm being a unix command to delete
data.)

But this week's attacks came with a promise, first articulated
in the defacement of CSI, and restated on the FTC websites: Every
Friday will bring a new attack against government and corporate
sites under the theme of #FFF, or Fuck the FBI Friday.

"We are already sitting on dozens of unreleased targets," said
an Antisec anon, who went on to describe an inventory of already
compromised servers that could fill five months or more of #FFF
releases.

"Yes, each and every Friday we will be launching attacks… with
the specific purpose of wiping as many corrupt corporate and
government systems off our internet," the anon continued.

The choice of the FTC is an odd one, given the independent
agency has no role in ACTA negotiations. Instead, it's tasked with
fighting unfair business practices, sanctioning companies like Google and Facebook for privacy violations, and
running the Do-Not-Call list -- hardly the stuff of Big Brother
stomping on online rights forever.

While many attacks are likely to be simple defacements like the
FTC website, Antisec claims to also be going through mail spools,
SQL databases and password files on dozens of corporate and
government servers which are unaware of their presence.

The anon speaking to Wired described the string of hacking as
having "no foreseeable end in sight," going on to say "the more we
own, the more we steal credentials to even more targets."

Jerry Irvine, a member of the National Cyber Security Task Force
told the New York Times last week that attacks would become
more frequent, describing the amorphous collective as
"unstoppable," because of the poor state of security online.

In an environment of heightened political tensions around
protest movements like the Arab Spring and moves to restrict the
internet like ACTA, those vulnerabilities are likely to play more
of a role in Anonymous' political dialogue.

"We've been saying it for the longest (time)," the Antisec anon
explained, "this is war."

Comments

Just remembering the famously successful followup to the promise to bring down facebook on 5th November. The hackers who actually succeed don't pay any attention to what these guys say, and all these guys do is take down unimportant sites or the public sections of government ones, and claim to have brought down the system.

Tubbles

Feb 20th 2012

I still find it amusing when the press say that "Anonymous will do X" even though it is not even a homogenous entity. OK, a couple of people who are in the chat rooms say something. Are they the campaign leaders? Or just some kid trying to self-appoint as spokesperson?